The Paternity Promise

“She’s your daughter. Yours and…and Anne’s.”

Blake turned away, and Grace could only stare at the broad shoulders still encased in his tux. She ached to tell him she was sorry for all the lies and deception. Except the lies had been necessary, and the deception wasn’t hers to tell.

“Anne called me,” she said instead. “Told me she’d picked up a vicious infection. Begged me to come. I jumped a plane that same afternoon but when I got there, she was already slipping into a coma. She died that evening.”

Blake angled back to face her. His eyes burned with an unspoken question. Grace answered this one as honestly as she could.

“Anne didn’t name you as Molly’s father. She was almost out of it from the drugs they’d pumped into her. She was barely coherent… All I understood was the name Dalton. I knew she’d worked here, so…so…”

She broke off, her throat raw with the memory.

“So you brought Molly to Oklahoma City,” Blake finished, spacing every word with frightening deliberation, “and left her on my mother’s doorstep. Then you called Delilah and said you’d just happened to hear she needed a temporary nanny.”

“Which she did!”

He gave that feeble response the disgust it deserved. “Did you enjoy watching my brother and me jump through hoops trying to determine which of us was Molly’s father?”

“I told you! I didn’t know which of you it was. Not until I’d spent some time with you.”

Even then she hadn’t been sure. The Dalton twins shared more than razor-sharp intelligence and devastating good looks. Grace could see how her cousin might have succumbed to Alex’s charisma and self-confidence. She’d actually figured him for Molly’s father until she’d come to appreciate the rock-solid strength in quiet, coolly competent Blake.

Unfortunately, Blake’s self-contained personality had made her task so much more difficult. Although friendly and easygoing, he kept his thoughts to himself and his private life private. If he’d had a brief affair with a woman who’d worked for him, only he—and possibly his twin—had known about it.

Grace had hoped the DNA tests they’d run would settle the question of Molly’s paternity. She’d been as frustrated as the Dalton brothers at the ambiguous results.

Then they’d launched a determined search for Molly’s mother and thrown Grace in a state of near panic. She’d sworn to keep her cousin’s secret. She had no choice but to do just that. Molly’s future depended on it. Now Blake had unearthed at least a part of that secret. She couldn’t tell him the rest, but she could offer a tentative solution.

“As I understand it, Molly’s parentage can’t be absolutely established unless the father’s DNA is matched with the mother’s. She… Anne…was cremated. I don’t have anything of hers to give you that would provide a sample.”

Not a hairbrush or a lipstick or even a postcard with a stamp on it for Molly to cling to as a keepsake. The baby’s mother had lived in fear for so long. She’d died the same way, mustering only enough strength at the end to extract a promise from her cousin to keep Molly safe.

“You could test my DNA,” Grace said, determined to hold to that promise. “I’ve read that mitochondria are inherited exclusively through the female line.”

She’d done more than read. She’d hunched in front of the computer for hours when not tending to Molly. Her head had spun trying to decipher scientific articles laced with terms like hypervariable control regions and HVR1 base pairs. It had taken some serious slogging, but she’d finally come away with the knowledge that those four-hundred-and-forty-four base pairs determined maternal lineage. As such, they could theoretically be used to trace a human’s lineage all the way back to the mitochondrial Eve. The Daltons didn’t need to go that far back to confirm Molly’s heritage. They just needed to hop over one branch on her family tree.

The same thought had obviously occurred to Blake. His eyes were chips of blue ice as he delivered an ultimatum.

“Damn straight you’ll give me a DNA sample. And until the results come back, you’ll stay away from Molly.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I want you out of this house. Now.”

“You’re kidding!”

She discovered an instant later that he wasn’t. In two strides he’d closed the distance between them and wrapped his fist around her upper arm. One swift tug had her off the sofa arm and marching toward the library’s door.

“Blake, for God’s sake!” As surprised as she was angry, she fought his grip. “I’ve been taking care of Molly for weeks now. You can’t seriously think I would do anything to hurt her.”

“What I think,” he returned in a voice as icy as his eyes, “is that there are a helluva lot of holes in your story. Until they’re filled in, I want you where I can watch you day and night.”

Two

“Get in.”

Blake held open the passenger door of his two-seater Mercedes convertible. The heat of the muggy July evening wrapped around them, almost as smothering as the worry and fear that clogged Grace’s throat.

“Where are we going?”

“Downtown.”

“I need to tell Delilah that I’m leaving,” she protested. “Get some of my things.”

“I’ll let my mother know what’s happening. Right now all you need to do is plant your behind in that seat.”

If Grace hadn’t been so stunned by this unexpected turn of events, the brusque command might have made her blink. This was Blake. The kind, polite, always solicitous Dalton twin. In the weeks since she’d insinuated herself into Delilah’s home, she’d never known him to be anything but patient with his sometimes overbearing mother, considerate with the servants and incredibly, achingly gentle with Molly.

“Get in.”

She got. Even this late in the evening, the pale gray leather was warm and sticky from the July heat. The seat belt cracked like a rifle shot when she clicked it into place.

As the convertible rolled down the curved driveway, Grace fought to untangle her nerves. God knew she should be used to having her life turned upside down without warning. It had happened often enough in the past few years. One call. That’s all it usually took. One frantic call from Hope.

No, she corrected fiercely. Not Hope. Anne. Although her cousin was dead, Grace had to remember to think and remember and refer to her as Anne.

She made that her mantra as the Mercedes sliced through the night. She was still repeating it when Blake pulled into the underground parking for Dalton International’s headquarters building in downtown Oklahoma City. Although the clicker attached to the Mercedes’s visor raised the arm, the booth attendant leaned out with cheerful greeting.

“Evenin’, Mr. Dalton.”

“Hi, Roy.”

“Guess your brother ‘n his bride are off on their honeymoon.”

“Yes, they are.”

“Sure wish ‘em well.” He leaned farther down and tipped a finger to his brow. “How’re you doin’, Ms. Templeton?”

She dredged up a smile. “Fine, thanks.”

Grace wasn’t surprised at the friendly greeting. She’d made many a trip to Dalton International’s headquarters with Molly and her grandmother. Delilah had turned over control of the manufacturing empire she and Big Jake had scratched out of bare dirt to her sons. That didn’t mean she’d surrendered her right to meddle as she saw fit in either DI’s corporate affairs or in her sons’ lives. So Delilah, with Molly and her nanny in tow, had regularly breezed into boardrooms and conferences. Just as often, she’d zoomed up to the top floor of the DI building, where her bachelor sons maintained their separate penthouse apartments.

The penthouse also boasted a luxurious guest suite for DI’s visiting dignitaries. That, apparently, was where Blake had decided to plant her. Grace guessed as much when he stopped at the security desk in the lower lobby to retrieve a key card. Moments later the glass-enclosed elevator whisked them upward.

Once past the street level, Oklahoma City zoomed into view. On previous visits Grace had gasped at the skyline that rose story by eye-popping story. Tonight she barely noticed the panorama of lights and skyscrapers. Her entire focus was on the man crowding her against the elevator’s glass wall.

She hadn’t been able to tell which Dalton twin was which at first. With their dark gold hair, chiseled chins and broad shoulders, one was a feast for the eyes. Two of them standing side by side could make any woman drool.

It hadn’t taken Grace long to separate the men. Alex was more outgoing, with a wicked grin that jump-started female hormones without him half trying. Blake was quieter. Less obvious. With a smile that was all the more seductive for being slow and warm and…